Stag Millenium Cylinder Heads

Tony Fox writes:

New heads are now available for the princely sum of 2,000 to 2,500 pounds from Abinger Hammer, Dorking, surrey, UK.

They have been remanufactured through the SOCTFL arm of the SOC and under the expert guidance of Mike Fisher. A set of cores were found that had been replicated some years ago in a failed attempt to make the Millennium heads around 10 years ago. For a number of financial reasons it never got completely off the ground and only a half dozen sets were made.

Under Mike's stewardship, the project was resurrected and the cores purchased by the SOC SOCTFL for another attempt to make heads available. It represented a number of technical challenges as no drawings could be found even after pleading with the archive keepers at Gaydon. Eventually, Mike had a set of drawings made by reverse engineering from an original head. The heads have been launched and several pairs were displayed at the SOC National Day this July at the Safari Park in Bewdley, WORCS. Two cars have been running now with so far low mileage, one has achieved 2,000 miles so far and no problems reported, it will be a slow process I'm sure. However, heads can be purchased now. A foundry to do a production run will be in the Midlands, the prototypes leaving some room for improvement at the foundry used to date. Small adjustments need to be made to the cores by a foundry that can then successfully put them into production.

The castings will then go to a machine shop in the Midlands where they will be completely machined. These machined heads will then go to Abinger Hammer in Dorking for final assembly, installation of valves, guides and camshafts so the product you buy is a complete assembly ready to bolt on to your existing engine.

This may seem an expensive project but it is rapidly becoming the only one as heads are getting older and more corroded with use and time.

Posted on February 16, 2012